Read an Excerpt
RUN AND ASK DADDY
IF HE HAS ANY MORE MONEY
An Exercise in Italics
Well now! It was Easter and my friend David was helping his
wife Milly Frood in the shop when he heard a voice he
recognised crying loud and clear across the crowded room,
"Run and ask Daddy if he has any more money," and his blood
ran cold.
Easter is upon us now. It is a season when we should reflect
upon our sins and consider the pain we cause others, especially
those who have no choice but to put up with us; this trauma of
self-knowledge, self-revelation, culminating on Easter Friday,
leaving us Saturday to shop and recover, so that on Sunday we
can wake exhilarated to our new selves--and then have
Monday to calm down a bit and prepare to get back to work.
Should, should! Mostly we just give each other cards and Easter
eggs and are grateful for the holiday.
David is in his early forties. He has not very much reddish hair
and an abundant, very red beard. He wears a tweed jacket. He
is now a professor. He used to be a mere lecturer but his
Polytechnic turned into a University and voila! there he was,
Professor Frood, a pillar of society: looked up to and trusted: a
family man.
A really nice guy, too: the trustful kind, prone to loving not wisely
but too well, as the best people are. But that is all in the past, of
course. Professors can't muck about. There's too much at stake.
All that a man can do is hope that the past, burrowing away like
some mole through the pleasant green fields of his present,
doesn't surface and spoil everything in an explosion of mud and
dirt.
This particular Thursday before Easter, at two minutes past four
in the afternoon, it seemed as if it very well might.
Milly Frood is sometimes spoken of by friends as Frilly Mood.
They're being ironic. She's a really un-frilly, serious, nice, good
woman. She has straight hair and a fringe and a plump, rather
expressionless, round face and a body well draped in
unnoticeable clothes. The Frood children, Sherry and Baf, now in
their teenage years, have never wittingly eaten sugar or meat
under their own roof: Frilly Mood has seen to that. The kids are
healthy if a little thin, and very polite. Frilly Mood's done well by
them. It is no crime to be serious.
The shop is between the Delicatessen and the Estate Agents,
down the High Street. It's an upmarket gift shop, selling the kind
of decorative things nobody needs but everyone likes to have,
from papier-mache bowls (French) in deep, rich colours, at 65 [pounds sterling];
black elephant pill boxes (Malaysian) at 2.75 [pounds sterling]; fluffy rabbits
(Korean) at 12.35 [pounds sterling]; little woolly lambs (New Zealand) at 8.50 [pounds sterling]
and decorated Easter eggs (English) at 4.87 [pounds sterling], and so on.
Pre-Easter is these days almost as busy a time as pre-Christmas.
Everyone feels the need for a little unnecessary something extra,
or what is life all about? Where are the rewards?
* * *
David was helping Milly out in the shop over the pre-Easter rush.
And why should he not? The Poly (sorry, University) was closed
for the holidays (sorry, vacation) and in Milly's words, David had
"nothing better to do." His wage remained that of a lecturer no
matter that he was called a professor. You can re-name
everything you like, but harsh facts don't alter just because
you've done so. In other words, money was tight and if Milly
could do without extra staff so much the better. Nevertheless,
David felt that helping out was a humiliation, and blamed Milly
for it. In Milly's view a man was only working if you could see
him working, and who can see a man thinking?
The voice he recognised was that of Bettina Shepherd; the
voice had a most attractive actressy double timbre (that's in
italics because it's French, not because it has significance for this
story) and it was familiar because there'd been a time when it
had spoken many words of true love, murmured many a sinful
suggestion into his ear. But all that had been some seven years
back, a long time ago: longer, surely, than was needed to make
that man now feel responsible for the man then. Do we not all
grow an entirely new skin every seven years? Should a man not
be allowed to start anew; as with a driving licence, should the
passage of time not wipe out past misdeeds?
Daddy was the man Bettina referred to: he was at the back of
the shop where the inexpensive trinkets were. Bettina was
looking peculiarly attractive in a cashmere dress, in seasonal
yellow, belted by a linked chain which for all anyone could tell
was made of pure gold; the whole setting off her bosomy figure,
little waist and black hair to advantage. Daddy was gray-suited,
good-looking, gentlemanly and wore a solid gold tie-pin. David
thought he looked extremely boring and rather stupid, but David
would, wouldn't he?
* * *
"David, this has to stop," Bettina had said to him in the History
Tutorial Room one day, seven years ago. "You are a married
man and I'm going to be married too. The ceremony is next
week. I wanted to tell you earlier but didn't like to, because I
didn't want to upset you. You are the only man I'll ever really
love but I have to think of my future. We have to be realistic.
You could never support two homes in any comfort and I'm just
not cut out for employment. I'm not that kind of person." He'd
thought his heart would break. He was surprised it went on
beating. Later he'd told himself he was lucky to be out of a
trivial, passing affair with such an unfeeling, whimsical person,
but he'd never really believed himself. The truth was that he'd
taken no real pleasure since in Milly's straight hair and earnest
face. He could see Milly was good, but what a man wanted was
something more than honest worth. Sometimes he felt guilty
because others called his wife Frilly Mood, ironically, but then
he'd tell himself she'd always been like that. Not his doing.
His blood ran cold--I say this advisedly. When David heard
Bettina's voice--last heard on the floor behind the sofa in the
History Tutorial Room--echoing through the shop at two minutes
past four, he felt a chill strike down his head to his right shoulder,
into his arm and down to his fingers, and he had the feeling that
if that section of blood didn't warm up before it got back up to his
heart, that organ would freeze and this time stop once and for all.
So much a heart can stand, no more.
David turned his back on his customers, lest he be seen and
recognised by Bettina, and busied himself looking for a Peruvian
crucifixion scene, grateful that his heart had survived the shock.
But not before he had seen the little girl obediently leave her
mother's side and head through shopping bags and spring-clad
elbows towards her father. Bettina, near the door, was
clearly interested in purchasing the papier-mache bowl at
65 [pounds sterling]; Daddy flicked through Easter cards at
the back of the shop.
The Peruvian crucifixion scene consisted of six pieces in
brightly glittering tin--a crimson Judas, a gold Jesus, a navy
Pontius Pilate, a scarlet Mary Magdalene, a pale blue Madonna,
and a black cross.
The little girl had red hair like David's own. Bettina had black
hair; Daddy's was fair and painfully sparse, as if responsibility
had dragged a lot of it out. The little girl must be six years old.
Her front teeth were missing, to prove it.
The Easter cards were the cheapest things sold in the shop. For
75p you could buy cards depicting bunnies and chickens; from
there on up to 2 [pounds sterling] you could find anything an artist in a
time of recession could invent. Milly and David Frood saw the innovation
of the Easter card as one of the more sinister accomplishments of
the Greetings Card Industry. Who ever in their youth had heard
of an Easter card? All part of the commercialisation of religion,
etc., etc. Obliged to live by commerce, the Froods despised
commerce. Who doesn't?
Such things pass quickly through the mind when sights are seared
into a man's heart, and he doesn't know what to think or feel, and
he's gazing at a shelf.
David felt a familiar hand upon his arm. It was his wife's.
"Perhaps we should have another baby," she said, to his further
astonishment.
"Why now?" he asked. "Why mention it now in the middle of
such a rush?"
"Because we're always in a rush," said Milly Frood, answering
back, quite out of character, "as anyone not on the dole these
days is. And I just saw a little girl in the shop with hair the same
lovely colour yours was when you were young: and I thought, last
chance for a baby. I'm nearly forty now." Before David could
reply, a voice behind him said, "Is there no one serving here?"
and Milly Frood turned quickly back to her work and David was
let off the hook.
The familiar hand had cooked his food, burped his babies,
returned the VAT, encouraged him in love and in illness, and it
was a whole seven years since he had even been grateful for it,
he realised. Now suddenly he was. But the habit of
disparagement remained. "Why mention it now?" he'd said,
discouraging spontaneity, being disagreeable. He was ashamed of
himself.
Another baby. David had not really wanted children in the first
place: he had not wanted to get married. He would tell me about
it when he lamented the everyday ordinariness of his life. The
college, the kids, the shops, the bills, and never anything
happening. But a man's seed bursts from him here and there,
unwittingly, and a good man settles down to his responsibility,
sometimes with a good heart, sometimes not. Another baby?
David felt all of a sudden Milly could have anything she wanted.
Suppose Bettina saw him; recognised him, greeted him? Then
everything could simply fall apart. Supposing Daddy looked from
his child's hair to the red beard, and remembered some clue, some
time, some place? It's a wise man doubts his child's paternity, if
his wife is Bettina. Supposing this, supposing that?
Let off the hook--but of course he wasn't let off the hook. The
past may be another country, but there are frequent international
flights from there to here, especially over the public holidays,
when everyone leaves their homes and mills about in search of
objects, not caring who remembers what. A papier-mache bowl
here, an Easter card there.
"Daddy," said the little piping voice: was it like Sherry's? Was it
like Baf's? It was. "Mummy says do you have any more
money?"
Silence fell upon the shop. All waited for the reply: mothers,
divorcees, widows, working women, and their escorts, should
they have them. It's mostly women who shop. Slips of girls.
Redheaded six-year-olds with gap teeth looking trustingly up at
alleged fathers. An honest question, honestly asked, in time of
recession.
David turned: you cannot look at a single shelf forever. David
caught Bettina's eye. Bettina smiled, in recognition,
acknowledgement. Bettina's mouth was not quite as plump and
full as once it had been. Everyone waited. A question publicly
asked will be publicly answered.
"Tell your mother," said Daddy loudly, "the answer is no. My
money's all gone and your mother has spent it."
Daddy tipped over the box of Easter cards onto the floor and,
parting customers with grey-suited elbows and gold-ringed
hands, made his way to the door and out of it. The little girl ran
weeping after him. David saw Daddy take his little girl's hand as
they passed the window: he saw her smile: evidently the little girl
cried easily and cheered up easily. Sherry had been like that.
If a woman has no money left, perhaps she'll turn back to love?
Bettina stood irresolute for a moment, all eyes upon her. She
looked at Milly, she looked at David. Then she said to Milly, "I
just love the shop," and followed her husband and daughter out.
It was four minutes past four.
Bettina had found herself pregnant: perhaps by one, perhaps by
another. Perhaps she had not been unfeeling, whimsical, in
dismissing him, David, after all, behind the sofa in the History
Tutorial Room. Perhaps the dismissal had been an act of love, to
let the erring husband off the hook? Perhaps she had simply
done what was right? In thinking better of Bettina, in forgiving
her, David felt himself become quite free of her. And high time
too. Seven whole years!
I just love the shop.
"What a nice woman," said Milly. "Saying that. Did she know
you or something?"
"No, she didn't," said David. "And you're the nicest woman I
know," and he found that, though the first was a lie, the second
was true. Happy Easter, everyone! Which speaks for itself: no
need for explanation, or excuse.